Deborah Szekely

Quote: “When do people stop and think? Kids don’t think; it’s TV full-time. I love my mind. It’s entertaining and challenging. And it gets better all the time.”

The daughter of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, Deborah Szekely was a founder of the modern health and fitness movement. At 17, she married Edmund Szekely, a 34-year-old, Jewish, Hungarian scholar who came to the U.S. during Hitler’s reign of terror and landed, eventually, in Southern California. Forced to leave the country when his legal documents expired, Szekely took his young bride to Mexico, where they established the first of their famed destination spas, Rancho La Puerta, in Tecate.

Over the next seven decades, Deborah Szekely has lived a remarkable life that has, in addition to her fitness career, included service to the U.S. as president of the Inter-American Foundation, work with the Organization of American States and as principal delegate to the Inter-American Commission on Women. She lives on Bankers Hill, in her home of 58 years.

Q: Congratulations. You have a special birthday coming up.

A: May 3. I’ll be 90 — in years, but not actions.

Q: Do you feel different now than you did 10 or 20 years ago?

A: I feel smarter. I use my time better, because I feel I’ve got to get to it in the next 10 years. On Friday, I had lunch with the new president of San Diego State and then went to the opera. The day before, I drove to the Grand Del Mar for dinner. And I didn’t get lost. I had a lunch appointment every day last week. And I took my grandson to the Aztecs basketball game Saturday night for his birthday.

Q: Phew. In 2007, at 85, you said you were looking forward to the decade of change. What change have you experienced so far?

A: I worked to create something that didn’t work out, but it’s in file boxes in the garage, and it’s still going to happen. I was working with USD on something called “Living Skills: 5th Grade Curriculum.” I wanted them to do a pilot in one city in each of four different states, during which the fifth-grade kids would drop off the grid for a year to learn living skills. Had the Democrats held control [of the House], I would have had an earmark and been able to do it.

Q: No ABCs?

A: No. They’d be learning accounting, by keeping a budget, and comparison shopping. They’d have $50 in a bank account, and no check could be over $5, so they would have to budget. They would learn living skills; gardening, cooking, cleaning. There would be field trips to factories, and farms. USD would have got $1 million to oversee it. It would include nutrition, how the body functions and how the world works.